AN: Sorry this is so late, y'all. Life's been really busy and I've been struggling with burn-out and falling behind in a lot of things. Thank you for your patience, and I hope you enjoy the chapter. The next one will (hopefully) be on time! ❤


It was two in the goddamn morning by the time Gordon came back and I was allowed to leave.

I fell asleep in his office, head resting on my arms from when I tried and failed to prop myself up on his desk. Murphy didn't have to cuff me after all; I just sat there, searching through my jumbled thoughts and thinking about whether or not I'd be happy if Jahan had died.

And I still don't know what the answer is.

When I came back to Gotham, I knew things would be messy, that the aftermath of everything I did would be something I'd need to confront, even if all I wanted to do was hide from them, one drink at a time. Their faces—everyone I let down, everyone I hurt—never leave my mind, but every time I'm confronted with one, it's like I'm back to being an angry teenager again, unable to put a name to what was tearing open my chest. It wasn't until I tried to put it aside that I realized just how much my anger does rule me, and I hate that it was Strange who pointed it out.

I don't drink when I get back to the apartment, don't touch the pills, I just… sit on the bed all night, thinking with a clear head. Burying this won't solve anything.

The Amaseena is gone—half-blown to hell and Jahan nowhere to be found.

He might not be dead, but twelve others are and an entire street looks like a warzone.

And Red Hood caused it all. Well, partly. Not that I know anything, all things considered, but his tactics seem incongruous with the man from the warehouse. Who does these things—shoots someone without flinching, pistol-whips another, starts a gang war with such a high body count but seems to take no joy in it and keeps civilian casualties to a minimum?

Someone unhinged.

But that's the easy answer; Red Hood isn't like him.

'I don't hurt people like you.'

I remember all too vividly the look of elation on his face when he lit that money on fire, created an impromptu death squad and—

No, no—stop. Don't go there.

And Jahan is involved in this mess, but he wasn't the same man I confronted before to get a gun. I don't have much pity for him—he chose how he wanted his life to be a long time ago. Who's extreme enough to have that effect on him, to make him a hollowed version of a man who once lived his by pride, anger, and viciousness as long as it served a purpose, got him what he wanted?

Does the answer matter?

I can't decide if Jahan matters, either. If he was dead, then I'd really be like Bruce: All we'd have is each other.

That's how it's always been, him having a pulse doesn't change that. Don't start looking at it with rose-coloured glasses now.

It's like when I blackmailed Ivan and watched him flounder—that rushing sense of vindication when someone you've hated for so long finally gets what they deserve. But, just like then, holding onto those feelings is exhausting, it doesn't mend the wounds, ease the pain. I know what the outcome really looks like, that idea that you're sticking it to someone. What did it lead to with Parker and Ivan? Him and Zsasz?

'Be honest, Miriam. How much does your anger control you? How many times have you lost control since your ordeal with the Joker?'

Despite being exhausted enough to sleep for a day, I get up and grab my gym bag. I can't sit here and think anymore; my thoughts are going in too many directions and I'm struggling to sort one from the next. Hitting something that can't feel pain for a while—or until I can barely keep my eyes open—sounds like just as good a plan as any.

The sun's out for once, shining way too goddamn bright for nine in the morning, but I still put on the long-sleeved workout shirt that I know will make me overheat and pull a hoodie on top of that. I'm not sure where I'm headed, but that doesn't matter. How hard can it be to find a place, isn't that what we have Google maps for? Considering the fact that I've technically been a Gothamite for over twenty-three years, you'd think I'd know it better by now.

Guess that's what happens when you have someone else driving you around for most of that.

Thinking of Alfred reminds me that I need to call him. Lost in the list of things I should've done but haven't, I shut the door behind me, the lock not sticking like it usually does. My mind's already searching for a place that doesn't hurt, and I'm not paying attention until I run into something both soft and boney.

"Holy shi—"

"Ow!" a voice says, high and accusatory.

It's not until something pokes my stomach that I think of looking down, where I see a kid with a half-serious pout and her hand on her hip.

Zareen.

Her black hair's such a wiry bunch of curls that I don't know how I didn't see her earlier for how it's sticking up, and, by her expression, she's just as exasperated about running into each other like this as I am.

"Why are you always hiding somewhere?" I ask, rubbing my forehead and forcing a smile after giving her a once over to make sure I didn't injure anything. Dealing with a crying kid is the last thing I want.

"I'm not. You're just a grandma." She's pressing her lips tightly together, a lopsided grin poorly hidden behind a look of annoyance.

Grandma? Seriously?

My smile disappears quickly and I roll my eyes, shooing her out of the way as I lock the door.

"No school again?" Answering the jab seems like a recipe for my bad mood to spill over, and starting the day being an asshole is distinctly unappealing.

Zareen scoffs, rolling her eyes at me in a more exaggerated arc until she has to blink several times afterward. I keep back a laugh, but the attitude doesn't go away.

"It's Saturday. Aren't adults supposed to know this stuff?"

I feel a muscle twitch by my eye and several snarky replies come up, but I swallow them. Having to curb my automatic, snarky reactions does make me feel like an old woman. "Apparently not," I say instead, picking up my bag and edging around her to head for the stairs.

It's too damn early for this.

"Where are you going?" she calls out.

Taking a deep breath, I shove my frustrations aside, schooling my features. At this point, I don't know if she's purposely trying to annoy me or is bored and severely lacking on the adult supervision side of things.

"Gym." I want that to be the end of it, but then she sighs, her hands clenched together and looking at me like a sad puppy as she leans on the other end of the railing. "I need to… blow off some steam. There's a boxing gym not very far from here."

Well… I think there is.

The frustration ebbs when she doesn't say anything, and I make myself look—really look at her. She's staring at me expectantly, her feet shuffling as she bites on the edge of her sleeve. Beyond that, I can see small bruises on her shoulders from where her oversized sweatshirt slipped.

She's not trying to annoy you, she can't be at home and has nowhere else to go.

"Boxing?" she asks before I can speak past the guilt forming a lump in my throat, perking up and wrapping her arms around the spokes of the flight above so she can hang from them. "Dad likes watching that on TV."

Dropping my bag off my shoulder, I come around and lean where she was a moment ago, watching her use the stairs like an impromptu jungle gym. I'm not sure if I want to ask her why she's out here, what I'll actually do when I hear the answer.

You say you want to think about people beyond yourself, but it means nothing if you don't actually start, doesn't it?

"What are you doing out here again?" I ask, making insistent eye contact. Skipping school, hardly in her own apartment—something's wrong. Parents who care don't let their child just loiter in hallways. Not in Gotham. Zareen shrugs in answer, not looking at me. "Why don't you spend time in your apartment?"

It's not my place to push, I know it isn't, but I can't help but do it anyway. She opens her mouth to answer, the attitude coming back in a half-formed quip, but she drops from the railing when a loud thump from behind the shared wall between her place and mine shakes it. The snippy, precocious attitude I'm familiar with disappears, taking whatever she was going to say along with it.

You should know better than anyone what being afraid looks like, Miri.

"Did your dad ever teach you how?" I ask, pushing away from the railing and standing between her and her apartment door. Zareen's gaze snaps back to me like she's coming out of a dream.

"How to what?"

"Box." The smile comes more easily, doesn't feel forced. I don't know what I'm doing, really—but I remember the offer I made her: She could ask me for anything, stop by and I'd be a person she could rely on. It's a big thing to offer a kid, and going back on that isn't something I'll let myself do.

"Oh… no," she says after a moment of thought, looking up at me from under her eyelashes. There's hope there, and I won't be the one to let her down.

"Do you want to learn?"

Zareen stares at me with quiet excitement, that brimming energy returning. She seems younger now than she did before—earnest in a way I remember feeling once. But I don't remember when I felt that less and less, when it became something that disappeared entirely.

I don't want that to happen to her.

"C'mon then." I pick up my bag again, but not to leave. Opening my door, I throw the duffel inside and wait. I'm not sure if my smile's encouraging or disconcerting, but her expression only gets more eager until she looks at her apartment.

"You sure?" Skepticism creeps in, turning down the corners of her mouth and her sleeve finds its way between her teeth again, widening an existing hole in the fabric.

Jahan's face comes to mind, all his big promises about the adventures he'd take me on when he'd come back to visit and his assurances that I was his habibti, that I meant something to him. It's unfair to retroactively chastise myself about something I couldn't have known as a six-year-old, but the desire to attribute his failings as mine is one that's never gone away.

And I don't want Zareen to feel like that, either—like she's the reason people will always, always let her down, that there are people who don't pick up and leave just when you start letting them in.

"Yeah. We'll order pizza after, too, if you want."

I don't know why I'm smiling so much, why I'm suddenly alright with spending my morning with a lonely kid—or why I'm going to teach her how to fight. Someone left those bruises, and it's better that she knows how to protect herself early, even a little bit. There's the ever-present dilemma of what to do about Arkham and Strange, work to do on the Black Mask case, I've only called David to update him and sent a message to Naomi—and maybe I'm just looking for an excuse to avoid it all again but, right now, staying with Zareen seems more important.

"OK," she says, flashing her missing canine and her golden eyes getting brighter as she steps inside, head swivelling around as she stares at the takeout containers and piles of clothes littering the floor around the bed.

My certainty dissipates when she comes into my apartment, my unfamiliar burst of certainty wavering. I wonder if Zareen can tell that I don't spend any time around kids. God knows I'm no teacher, and probably a worse babysitter.

You're the one who offered to do this, you idiot.

"First thing's first," I say, clapping my hands together after shutting the door behind us. My anxiety is spiking, but I hide the nervous energy by digging some of my equipment out of my bag. "Show me your fighting stance."

I watch her jump into position, her legs so far apart it looks like she's about to drop and do the splits and her hands up and under her chin. What's supposed to be an expression of fierce determination resembles something closer to a small cat challenging a panther to a fight and expecting that they're gonna win.

"No, no—you'll hurt yourself like that." I want to laugh, but I manage to keep a straight face. Gently touching her arms and nudging her legs, I make her stance sturdier and show her how to keep her guard up. "Protecting your head is the most important thing, so keep your stance strong. When you punch you extend your arm like this—don't hyperextend it and don't hit as hard as you can. You want to keep your energy, you'll need it later."

Zareen mimics my movements, watching me closely before trying the moves herself. I show her how to wrap her hands, keep the fabric taut and her wrist supported. My hands become the targets she aims for, showing her over and over how to keep proper form, how to have power in her strikes. We sit together when I teach her how to cycle her breathing, to keep it steady and consistent. I watch as her eyes light up when I tell her weak points on a person's body, where to hit and how to get away when you're as small as she is. She laps up every word I say, dedicating it to memory. Her enthusiasm and excitement make the time pass by, and there's something about it that brings up a half-memory, something that keeps slipping away every time I direct my attention toward it.

It's not until I'm panting lightly that I realize how Zareen managed to give me a workout and took my mind off what happened last night better than I would've been able to do on my own. How she looks up at me, her face beaming, makes me feel like I finally did something right, that I'm doing better by the people around me.

"Wham!" she half-shouts, punching at an invisible target as she practices her footwork. "Now no one'll bug me. If they do, I'll just do that throat-punch thingy you showed me."

Memories of all the times I did just that—hit kids that bullied and called me names in school, how my primary source of dealing with pent-up anger and frustration was using my fists, how that's still something that I struggle with—is enough to make me lean against the counter for support.

You sure are brilliant, aren't you?

But no one ever sat me down and told me about what strength was, how it went beyond what Jahan taught me and what I saw in Bruce and Mom. How long did it take to even conceptualize that strength doesn't come from violence, that it doesn't have to be wrapped up in making someone else feel as badly as I did?

Maybe you still haven't learned that.

My hand covers Zareen's, lowering her fist before dropping down in front of her. Mom told me to endure, but that's not the same thing as taking pain lying down, accepting it in silence and anger.

Why didn't anyone tell me that, either?

"The point of learning how to fight isn't to hurt others, Zareen." I hesitate, but I put my hand on her shoulder, not unlike what Naomi did two days ago, and I can only hope I'm doing for Zareen what Naomi couldn't for me. "It's about learning how to keep yourself safe, to be confident that you won't be helpless." Continuing makes my voice hoarse, but I keep my gaze steady. "You need more practice, but don't ever let anyone convince you that you don't have any power. You do, you just need to learn how to use it."

It's like a punch to the stomach when I realize how much that applies to myself. What is it about giving advice to others that can make you feel like a sage and yet you throw it out the window at the next given opportunity when it comes time to using it yourself? Why aren't those the words I whisper to myself, repeat like a prayer rather than the hate I refuse to let go?

"How do you know when you have it?" she asks, her smile fading. I make sure to maintain mine.

"Not until you really need it, usually." When I laugh, Zareen joins in until we're descending into a fit of giggles that doesn't match what's weighing on me, but it makes me feel lighter. Standing up and brushing stray dust off my leggings, I give her a sideways grin. "You feeling hungry yet? I think I might eat an entire pizza myself."

The look on Zareen's face is enough to make me feel like maybe—just maybe—I don't ruin people after all.


Jesus fucking Christ.

I made one too many mistakes when I did eat an entire pizza myself, and now I feel like I'm going to burst at any moment, my stomach churning in protest. The extra cheese probably wasn't the best idea, either.

"I'm not eating until tomorrow," Zareen grumbles, sprawled out on the couch with a hand on her stomach and looking like she's about to fall into a food coma.

"Yeah, I'm with you there."

Laughing hurts, but it's like I can't help myself. She told me all about school and her friends while we waited for the delivery person to come, sniggered together about boys being gross as we dug in. I didn't offer up much about myself and she didn't ask apart from the occasional question about whether or not I'd done anything similar, and I was glad that I didn't have to come up with a lie. Leaning my head back against the couch cushion, I feel like I could sleep for hours and feel just fine afterward.

"What happened to your neck?" Zareen asks, snapping me to attention when I feel her small finger poke my exposed skin.

"Huh?" I ask, sitting up and swatting my hand at the skin, my sluggish brain struggling to remember.

Zareen points at me, her face screwed up in confusion. "Your neck. It looks like… someone bit you."

Now I press on it like I've just been burned. There's a barrage of images that comes with feeling the scars. They're lighter than the others, but you can still see the impressions of teeth, how deep they went in.

'I own you.'

My stomach turns until I think I'm going to throw up everything I ate, but I take a deep breath and remember the techniques I just taught her a few hours ago.

'You cannot even say his name. Is that not sign enough that he has too much power over you?'

Strange might be a shady piece of shit, but he is right.

"Would you believe that a vampire did it?" I ask. My grin's superficial and sweat's soaking my back, but I won't let myself have a breakdown that comes with others seeing my scars, grappling with everything they bring. I won't let him ruin today.

"No—I'm not stupid," she huffs, rolling over just enough so that I can see her narrowed eyes.

Putting a hand against my chest, I gasp like an offended Victorian lady. "Hey, vampires are totally real." Ignoring how my stomach protests, I turn around and raise my eyebrows. "Careful, you never know when Dracula might be listening."

My attempts at sounding menacing turn out to be for nothing when she looks at me in confusion. "Who's Dracula?"

Oh my Christ—kids today.

I think of Parker. How we consumed that book, talked about our favourite characters and the ones that were next to useless, comparing what we knew about vampires and then devolving into long debates before settling on a long list of B-movies to mock together. But… thinking of him doesn't hurt the same as before, the usual sting blunted. Parker would be happy that I'm talking with Zareen, that I'm trying—thinking of someone other than myself, even if his shadow never stops clouding my sun.

"There was… was a man who—"

I cut myself off when my voice breaks. This is the first time I've felt remotely alright with talking about him. Zareen hasn't made the connection between me and him and, even if she's heard the vile lies spouted by people like Jack Ryder, she doesn't associate those things with me.

"He isn't a good person, and he hurt me." There's no need to traumatize a nine-year-old, and I leave it at that. But Zareen sits up, her eyebrows furrowed as she looks from the scar to me. "He's gone, he can't hurt anyone now. It's alright," I say, waving away her worry. I'm once again struck by my own words, how they contradict my raging paranoia.

You want her to believe them, so why won't you let yourself do the same?

"Did you beat him up?" she asks, staring at my fists now.

The feeling of glass puncturing his side, what it was like when my fist connected with his jaw, that—that overwhelming urge to shoot him and not being able to pull the trigger, of wanting to watch him bleed out while I laughed—it's all I think about for a moment.

"No. No, I didn't," I say quietly.

I also think about how it didn't do anything. No matter how much I wanted to kill him, I couldn't do it.

"But you're so strong," she says, squeezing my biceps as if to affirm it to herself.

I want to laugh and tell her how wrong she is, indulge in the negative energy that's always looking to engulf me, fixate on how weak I feel all the time, how my strength always amounts to nothing.

"Not really. Everyone feels weak sometimes."

Still do.

"How… how did you stop feeling like that?"

What would've happened if I had shot him, if I hadn't listened to Bruce? I don't know if I would've felt any better. Would killing Zsasz myself stop the feelings of his hands on my body, choking me in my sleep? Would I feel stronger for it?

"You don't, but it's… it's not always about stopping the feeling. Being scared is OK, it's what you do beyond that. Finding those moments to be brave." It's almost like it's Rachel speaking instead of me, parroting advice I never knew how to take to heart.

Zareen grows quiet, thinking to herself and nibbling on her pizza-sauce splattered sleeve. We go back to laying in place, close to falling asleep, when we both jump at the sound of a knock at the door.

"Who the fu—heck would that be?"

I barely managed to catch myself in time, but Zareen's not paying attention to my slip-up. She's staring at the door with terror in her eyes.

"It's my dad. I've been gone too long—"

"Zareen, it's OK—it's OK," I say, pressing down on her shoulders when she shoots up from the couch. "Just stay here, alright? I'll see who it is and you don't move for a minute, yeah?"

She nods, but my head's racing. It's either her dad or an unexpected visit from Jason—but he would've called ahead first, and Naomi would've just walked in. When I look through the spyhole, I freeze for a moment before turning the deadbolt and swinging the door open.

"Er... hi," Bruce says. He's wearing an old sweater and beat-up jacket with a baseball cap pulled down to cover most of his face, and for some godforsaken reason, I want to cackle at the sight of him in disguise. "I was going to call, but I thought I'd surprise you with some Thai—" He stops when he sees the small stack of pizza boxes and Zareen peeking conspicuously over the edge of the couch.

Fucking hell.

He always did have the worst sense of timing.

"You… wanna come in?" I ask after a moment. Staring awkwardly at one another with him holding a bag of food that he now doesn't know what to do with is enough to make me sweat all over again.

Bruce looks less sure of himself than he does as Batman, almost resembling the young man I knew before he left. But I don't have time to reflect. Upon seeing that it isn't her dad, Zareen pops off the couch, crossing her arms and staring at Bruce with a suspicious frown and a hip jutted out.

"Is he your boyfriend?" she asks, speaking to me. "I thought you were dating that other buff dude—"

Just when I'm about to throw a slice of pizza at her face or question as to exactly how she'd have any idea of who I am or am not dating—I haven't decided yet—Bruce sets the bags on the counter and extends a hand.

"Hi, very nice to meet you."

She looks from his hand to his face like he has the plague, and my initial urge to throw her back onto the couch turns into barely suppressed giggles. Bruce doesn't seem as offended as I thought he might be or even as awkward as he was a moment before. He's switched his charm on, dropping down so he doesn't tower over her.

"I'm Miriam's cousin, she used to live with me for a little while." He looks up at me with a half-smile. "I'm not around as much as I should be, but you look responsible."

His expression turns serious, but never mocking or condescending. It's only now that I think about how I've never seen him interact with children before, and I don't know why it's so surprising to see him talking with one now, especially as good-naturedly as he is. My own lingering sense of annoyance fades.

"I think she could use some help. Miriam tends to lose her socks all over the place. Never a day went by when I didn't find them in the strangest spots," Bruce begins, stopping when she starts to titter.

"No, she didn't," Zareen says, looking from me to Bruce with a goofy grin, giving new objections at every quirky, made-up detail Bruce gives until they devolve into a conversation of nuh-uh and uh-huh's.

"You weren't supposed to tell anyone about that," I interrupt, looking at him between the fingers covering my eyes in faux-embarrassment. Zareen's face lights up with a fresh bout of giggling and arguing, asking more ridiculous questions about where exactly I supposedly lost my socks and Bruce coming up with more elaborate answers until a stitch pinches my side,

"Kept happening until she totally ran out—she had no idea where they'd all run off to," Bruce says, the mischief on his face something that I haven't seen since I was close to Zareen's age. "It used to be my job to keep an eye out for the Sock Bandit, but something tells me you'd be better at it than I am."

She rolls her eyes for the umpteenth time, scoffing. "Sock bandits aren't real."

"Have you ever seen one?" Bruce rejoins, turning his head to the side and raising a brow.

Zareen's mouth opens and closes quickly. "Well… no."

"Then how do you know if they aren't real?"

She opens her mouth to argue but closes it again, shooting him a look that tells him that he won't have the victory for long before turning to me. "I'm gonna go home. I need to get back before… before Dad's back from the store."

I'd be an idiot to not see that she's lying, but interjecting or stepping in is something I'm not equipped to do. She knows where I am, and I can hope that's enough for now. It doesn't stop my throat from getting tight or my hackles from rising. "See you, Zar. Pop over whenever you want, OK?"

Nodding, she waves goodbye and shuts the door behind her. It hasn't even been three seconds before Bruce gives me a look. "'Buff dude'? Is that who was here when—"

My face goes hot again, mortified at what he might've seen when he was perched outside my window like a goddamn stalker, and I barely suppress the urge to punch his arm or give any other confirmation to what he might be suspecting.

"Don't ask." My voice sounds harsher now that Zareen's gone, and I wince. He gives me yet another look, something close to what I'd imagine a disapproving father giving, and I sigh. "She's my neighbour—spends a lot of time by herself hiding out on the stairwell. I invited her over and showed her a few things and we had pizza. It's no big deal."

"You don't think her parents will mind that their daughter's spending time with a stranger?" Bruce looks around my apartment, probably for empty bottles and cans of alcohol, the playfulness gone and the coolness of his other persona returning along with my bitterness.

"I don't think they give a fuck at all about what she does and doesn't do." I'm snapping again, getting closer to biting his head off. Closing my eyes, I pinch the bridge of my nose and take a deep breath. "I'm just… I don't know, looking out for her, I guess." When I look up, Bruce nods, casting his eyes downward.

He didn't show up just to surprise me with Thai.

"You're here about last night."

He just looks at me and doesn't answer, but he doesn't deny it either.

"Did you… did you hear anything?"

My voice breaks again and I'm surprised at the tears stinging my eyes. Turning, I wipe them away before they can fall, picking up the remnants of my lunch with Zareen and throwing it into one box while determinedly not making eye contact.

"They haven't found his body—they're assuming he's alive." I release a breath I didn't know I was holding, my grip loosening around the cups in my hand. The relief I feel is something I don't have the ability to rationalize. "Red Hood escaped through the sewers, it's not beyond the realm of possibility that he took Jahan with him. Black Mask targetted all of Hood's lieutenants, two out of four are dead. Things are getting ugly."

I can tell the difference in his voice now when he changes back and forth rather than it just being his expressions before. Something in my chest tightens, comparing how swift he was to let go of the man I thought I knew who was just in front of me a moment ago, and I wonder if it was ever real at all.

"Why aren't you out there, then?"

Bruce becomes visibly more awkward than before, pacing around my apartment much like Zareen did earlier, and I'm very glad that stopping at a twenty-four-hour liquor store wasn't on my agenda last night.

"Good to see that you're still a slob." It's not the answer I expected, and neither is my laugh in reply.

"You would be, too, if Alfred didn't clean up everything."

He smirks and rolls his shoulders up in a half-shrug but doesn't deny it. We both know we're properly useless without having Alfred around.

All the more reason you should see him more often now.

Clearing my throat, I run my hands through my hair. "You didn't answer my question."

Whatever happened to not asking questions you don't want to know the answers to?

"Being here is more important," he says after a long moment.

I want to believe that. I want that to be true, more than anything, but I don't know if I'll ever believe it, no matter how sincere Bruce is. Maybe there are some disappointments that just... that I can never leave behind.

But I almost lose it completely when I see that he's holding Mom's ring. He found the box in the mess around my bags, the one I haven't had the courage to open and hold in my hands other than for a few seconds at a time.

Something else he took away.

I can't go there—can't let myself fall down that pit. I'd never say it aloud, but I know that there's only so many times I can keep dragging myself out of it before there's no coming back. And I won't let that happen. I can't let that happen.

"Have you heard much about Roman Sionis?"

Now it's my turn to change the subject, turning the conversation back to something that doesn't involve talking about our feelings. Bruce seems relieved, carefully setting the small box on top a haphazardly folded sweater.

"Janus Cosmetics is failing, Wayne Enterprises was looking at buying them out when Roman took over. He's been driving it into the ground since his parents died," he says after a moment of thought.

"What about criminal activity?"

"You mean beyond the white-collar—" A hard glint of calculation makes his eyes sharper, his posture changing as the great detective comes out in him. "Your team's investigating him?"

"Will be, yeah. He's the most solid lead I can think of. Gordon agrees."

Bruce nods, joining me at the small table and leaning over one of the chairs, his hands white where he's gripping the back of it. "I'll look into it. Hood's been upping his attacks, it's been… distracting."

You mean that dealing with local terrorism is a big ask for a one-man team? Who would've thought.

"You should leave that to the JTTFs."

He scoffs, looking at me like I should know better, that I should have more faith in him. "They can't handle men like him, Miri."

I don't have a reason as to why the anger bubbles up, why it wants to form itself into a living being that controls my limbs, why I have a brief flash of throwing something else at him, why I'm so convinced that it'll feel good when I know—I know it won't.

"They could if they had access to the same tech you do." It's like I can't help but pick at the wounds that are just starting to scab over, tearing them open until it grows a little wider each time.

How long before it doesn't heal at all anymore?

"That only ends one way, and I'm not giving them the tools to misuse—"

I know how it ends even if I don't want to.

Is it worth it, Miri? Do you always want to be angry, do you want to destroy everything, just like he said you do?

"Stop," I interrupt, desperate to take my words back, to have not started this at all. I feel so much younger, so unlike the person I know I am, like I'm back in the place when I was longing to have my family close, before I learned to expect them to leave me behind. "I don't… I don't want to fight with you."

I also don't like feeling this way in front of Bruce, giving him another reason to treat me like a child and keep me in the dark. When I left, I thought I was taking a page from his book—leaving everything that hurt and coming back as someone else, someone stronger for it.

But maybe that didn't happen for either of us.

"I went to Arkham," I say eventually, my shoulders slumping as I cradle my head in my hands. Glancing up for a moment is all I need to see that he knew already. "Were you there?"

The thought of him actually hiding out in a tree somewhere while I walked in there, terrified and high, makes me drive my nails into my scalp. Bruce sits down quietly in the chair next to mine.

"No, not for long—I do regular patrols up that way."

The apartment is quiet; I don't hear the sounds of the street outside or the loud voice of an announcer from some sports channel playing on the other side of the wall like I usually do. It's just me and Bruce breathing, finding our footing around each other, on the edge of sliding down different paths of the same slope.

"Dr. Strange is the shrink I've been assigned to."

More gears are turning in his head, and he frowns. "That's odd. Why would the head of Arkham take you on as a patient?"

My question exactly.

"He said that the one I was assigned to is on leave and he's taking over his cases." Looking at him, Bruce sees the bullshit just as much as I do. "The session felt more like… like I was under a microscope. Like he had a scalpel against my stomach or something. He was… weird. Creepy."

And a fucking asshole.

Bruce is looking at me with more concern, straightening as his own anger surfaces. I don't have it in me to assuage his misplaced sense of protectiveness right now, I just need to feel like I'm not drowning. Just for a little while.

"The first session didn't go very well," I say, talking quickly. He settles back in his chair, watching the movements I make, how I'm curling in on myself. I don't want to tell him about how I got upset, how I thought about hurting Strange, how I was so terrified that I was barely consolable, that I have a problem I don't know how to fix. "Do you wish that you got to confront Chill?" I ask instead, not looking at him. "That you could… I don't know, get answers?"

Now it's Bruce's turn to look surprised; he wasn't expecting this direction, and I don't think I was, either. He told me about what led to him leaving after Parker died and he brought me to the penthouse, tried, in the best way he knew how, to tell me why he failed. But my best friend's been dead for over a year and I'm not a hair's breadth away from catatonia anymore; I'm finally in a place where I want to hear him, where I can hear the truth without hating him for it.

"At the time, no." He looks uncomfortable with the question, but I feel a misplaced sense of hope at seeing him try. "Anger… anger was what mattered then; I didn't think words would help. It wouldn't bring my parents back." He takes a deep breath, taking off the baseball cap to smooth his hair back. "Now I wish I had."

He looks like he did the first time he came—Jesus, how that feels like it's been months ago already—regret is etched into his face, uncertainty that he doesn't know how to release.

"Strange wants me to see him."

I didn't want to entertain the possibility, to decidedly shove it into the Terrible Ideas corner of my brain and continue to spit fire at the suggestion of confronting anything, but I'm realizing that I can't. Because, the more I think about it, the more it scares me that it makes sense.

"For another appointment?" he asks.

For once, I can empathize with Bruce's doubling, how he keeps his two selves separate. The intense draw I feel to Jason is something I'm having a harder time denying, and keeping myself away isn't something I can resolve to do for more than a few hours. It's embarrassing how thinking about him makes my face warm, but it hurts more knowing that I already set that relationship up to fail, that it won't be long before he connects the dots, sees me for what I am. I can't tell him about all of this even though I want to.

But you have Bruce.

Do I?

"No, no. He wants me to—he wants to set up this…"

The tears come again and I push the heels of my hands against them like I can keep them inside, like this isn't real after all.

How long are you going to cling to that, too?

"He wants me to confront the—the Joker," I say, my voice a quiet whisper as I push harder until I see flashes of white, concentrating on keeping the images back as my throat closes. It's the first time I've said his name out loud in over a year, and even speaking it still feels like an invocation just like it did before when Bruce and Alfred took me home from the hospital the first time, when I really felt my life fall apart, and I can't even summon feelings of pride that I proved Strange wrong. "He told me that…"

"It doesn't matter what he said." Bruce's rage radiates off of him, turning into a physical presence onto itself that I can feel without seeing it. When I finally look at him, I see something that was absent since I saw him beating Joker, that driving urge to crush someone with his bare hands. "You're not going anywhere near him. It's bad enough that you're in the same building—"

It's another stab in the heart when I see that we share that, too.

"But Strange was right. I—I'm still—"

Whatever was left of me that wanted to keep the illusion of stability crumbles, and I hug Bruce. It feels odd, his stiff body against mine, how he hesitates before returning it, how my body screams at me to push him away, to hide.

Not this time.

"I'm terrified. All the time. It—it controls everything and I'm—"

I'm sick of it. I want to kill him. Spit in his face. Make him feel every bit of agony that he subjected me to. Be the last face he sees while his blood coats my hands.

But, most of all, I don't want to think about him. I want him gone from my memory and the marks he left erased from my body. I want to have never met him at all.

"I don't want to feel like this anymore," I say into his shoulder. It's the only thing I can force out, and I hope he understands the rest without me having to say it.

His muscles twitch, but he relaxes, his hand rubbing my back like he used to when I was young. "Do you think it'll help?" he asks, waiting until I'm the one to pull away. Wiping at my face, I stare at the wall like I didn't just lose it, that I'm fine. It doesn't matter if Bruce believes it or not.

"I… I don't know. But it… something has to be different, doesn't it?"

'Does it get any better?'

'No. No, it doesn't.'

Emotion won't convince Bruce not to lock me in a room in the Manor, won't keep him from trying to solve my problems for me. I don't want him to know how much time I've spent thinking about this, how short a period of time it's taken for me to talk myself into it—or maybe I didn't want to make it real for myself that I had.

"If those chips are being used in Arkham and implanted in patients, then I need to get in somehow. Talk to someone on the inside."

Bruce shakes his head. He's still angry—whether at Strange for suggesting it or himself that this is a necessity in the first place is unclear. "The Joker has no interest in helping you, Miriam. He doesn't operate that way—animals don't think like that."

I almost tell him about the conversation I had with Jahan about the nature of djinn, but I don't think I even understand the full meanings of that myself. Describing him as a demon or an animal doesn't do enough to encapsulate what that actually means, what he is. Or even if he—or anyone—is something that can be defined that way.

"Even if I can't get anything from him, I need access to their facilities—plant a drive that gives me an in to their closed system so that their nodes feed me whatever it is that they're passing off as medical care."

He's still articulating his dissent with body language, his mouth a firm line as he turns into a version of a stubborn father I never experienced for myself. "This isn't happening. I'll find a way in and—"

"Didn't you just say that your hands are full with Black Mask and Red Hood's bullshit, emphasize that people are dying because of those chips?" I interrupt.

He narrows his eyes, and the look of stubbornness is maddening. "I'll go with you."

Like that'll do anything, you dolt.

"No, you won't. You're not my support dog or something, holding my hand isn't required."

Bruce barks out a laugh in frustration, standing and walking in a circle with his hands in his hair like he might start ripping it out. He'd better be thinking about his promise, when he extended his finger in a pact that I believed he wouldn't break.

"Do you trust me or not?" I demand, walking in front of him until he meets my eyes. "Did you mean it when you said you'd trust me to tell you if I needed help, that you wouldn't treat me like a kid?"

His body stills, eyes looking for something that will give him a reason to go back on his word, put me in a corner because he thinks it's what will keep me safe. Bruce was always my protector, but he never taught me how to be one for myself. I'm prepared to argue with him, to not back down, when he sighs in resignation and digs into a coat pocket.

"Take this, then," he says, sounding weary. "It's like a panic button. If something goes wrong, if you're in danger or change your mind, you press it." He may be resigned, but he's still pleading, not wanting me to totally step away where he can't reach me.

I wouldn't let myself see it before, but there's more in my life beyond what's hurting me. There's something waiting that I turned my back on, a future I didn't think I had. I didn't want to see Bruce because I didn't want to face that constant reminder that he would never be able to move past what happened any more than I could, that we'd be permanent reminders of something we'd never be able to change.

But you can keep trying.

Leaning into him, I nod and feel his relief. "I just don't… I don't want to hide anymore. Is that a bad thing?"

Will it be something that hurts me later? Am I making another mistake?

But Bruce can't answer those questions for me, no matter how much he might want to. When he smiles, it's so sad that I can't look at him for long, letting it be enough that he's next to me, that his breathing is steady and deep, that he isn't leaving and that I don't want him to.


The chapter title comes from Amos Lee's "Hang On, Hang On" as I thought the lyrics had quite a few parallels with what Miri's struggling with and the direction her and Bruce's relationship is going. This will also be one of the last "low-key" chapters of this installment as I kick things up a notch Thank you for your support and love, I couldn't do this without you guys!